City Council passes bill to create Office of Nightlife

The City Council voted Wednesday in support of a measure to establish an official Nightlife Advisory Panel and Office of Nightlife, which will reach out to the city's clubs and entertainment venues in hopes of reducing regulation on small operators.

The board will consist of representatives from the Council and the mayor's office with ties to the industry, and will deliver a host of policy recommendations within 18 months. The office will seek to monitor trends and changes within the field and make appropriate suggestions to City Hall. Mayor Bill de Blasio supports the measure.

Brooklyn Councilman Rafael Espinal, who sponsored the bill, described it as a way of giving underground venues and small-dollar local establishments a chance against larger businesses.

"We're losing a lot of those mom-and-pop—if you want to call it mom-and-pop—nightlife venues, and it's important we come out and support that industry," the lawmaker said. "New York City is known as the city that never sleeps, and those small venues are what really gave New York City its identity."

Espinal's district includes swiftly gentrifying areas with an avid new arts scene, as well as historically black and Hispanic communities with red-eye spots of their own.

Espinal said he hopes to turn next to repealing the city's cabaret license statutes, which forbid establishments to obtain special permits in order to allow dancing. The councilman has labeled the law "historically racist," as it came about as a means of shutting down interracial clubs during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.

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